Friday, December 04, 2015

Proposed Late 2020s Russian Mission to Moon Would Require Six Angara Rocket Launches

Russia has made no secret of its desire to land cosmonauts on the lunar surface sometime in the late 2020s. As the United States, at least for the current administration, has decided to bypass the moon in favor of Mars, Russia could move to wipe out the humiliation it suffered at the hands of NASA when it lost the 1960s race to the moon with the landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. However, a Monday story in TASS suggests that a Russian moon landing effort would be complex, requiring up to six launches of its Angara rocket.